/ articles for review

Tweeting Judaism (Dr. Erica Brown, Weekly Jewish Wisdom, July 7, 2011)

Dr. Erica Brown, a writer and educator who works as the scholar-in-residence for the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington, writes: "Yesterday was historic in the world of social media networking. President Obama conducted his first town meeting via Twitter, tweeting out his messages in 140 character sound bytes. It is fair to say that for all the attention Twitter got, it reinforces the problem of oversimplifying complex issues. This is precisely the point made by a contemporary rabbi, Donniel Hartman of the Shalom Hartman Institute, in his recent article, ‘Can You Twitter Judaism?’ He wisely observes that, "The journey of a meaningful Jewish life needs a wide bandwidth." Click on the headline above to read Erica Brown’s entire article.

Can You Twitter Judaism? (Jason Miller, Jewish Week, June 27, 2011)

Rabbi Jason Miller cites Donniel Hartman’s latest column, " Judaism is not a Twitter-able Religion ," in this essay, and says: “Hartman is correct that we shouldn’t allow ourselves to water down Judaism into soundbites (or tweets). Our millenia-old Tradition should not be squeezed into 140-character messages. However, there are important opportunities to utilize Twitter (and other social networking sites) for the promotion of Judaism in positive ways.”

Interestingly, Miller also mentions what he called “an opposing viewpoint” by Rabbi Ruth Abusch-Magder. But Rabbi Magder, in her own response to Donniel Hartman’s column (posted as a comment at the bottom of his article): “I could not agree more with the idea modern Jewish life must be more than a numbers game. But Twitter is often creating connection to content and engaging people deeply too.”